


Snow in a Lab

by Latigra



Category: Final Fantasy VII
Genre: Children in Horrible Situations, Christmas fic, Gen, WARNINGS AT END NOTE, What Passes for Puberty in Sephiroth's Life, sorry - Freeform, this was supposed to be a happy fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-25
Updated: 2020-12-25
Packaged: 2021-03-11 02:46:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,286
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28317705
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Latigra/pseuds/Latigra
Summary: Usually, Sephiroth doesn't even notice Yule beyond the change in TV commercials and the occasional soggy gingerbread cookies in the cafeteria. It seems more important to Aerith, the lab's new denizen.
Relationships: Aerith Gainsborough & Sephiroth
Comments: 6
Kudos: 26





	Snow in a Lab

**Author's Note:**

> So this has been a hell of year, hasn't it? With the Plague confining me to my apartment and my job, I've banged out 160k words of fanfiction, holy shit. I'm gonna call that some kind of victory because we all could use all the victories we can get.
> 
> I still have a job and I'm also alive so, you know, it's fine. This is fine.
> 
> By which I mean, Happy Holidays and hang in there!
> 
> This fic is only half-proof read cause I got it in my head to publish on Christmas day and I've been working through the holidays and my friend Ro has been busy. I'll probably come back and clean it up later.
> 
> Also, I put warnings at the end of this one.

There's a little girl in the lab. Sephiroth might not have noticed her at all, but she stares at him with her big green eyes in the cafeteria. Which is not that unusual in and of itself (lots of people stare openly at Sephiroth), but she keeps doing it even after he stares back at her. Leans closer, if anything. Sometimes, it’s like she’s staring _through_ him. It bothers him.

It shouldn't. She seems small - under ten, perhaps - and likely doesn't know any better. And even if she does know better, what does Sephiroth care? Looks don't hurt. He knows what hurts. 

And not much has been hurting, lately. Professor Hojo must have something else to fixate on. He'd only supervised Sephiroth's training once that week. Six precious days of training with Lt. Armstrong without having to worry about random pauses to check Sephiroth's vitals, or draw some of his blood, or microdose him with mako. Great as it is, it's making Sephiroth a little anxious. What if Professor Hojo doesn't come back? What will happen to him?

He doesn’t get to find out. That very evening, Professor Hojo visits his room and brings all the medical trappings with him, including a sour-faced older nurse who peers at him from behind round glasses as she pierces the vein inside his elbow. Sephiroth stares straight ahead as she does it, counting the grey spots on the tile floor. 

“You’re twelve today, boy,” says Professor Hojo.

“I know,” says Sephiroth, even though it’s not true. It might be what Professor Hojo _thinks_ is his birthday, but Sephiroth has picked a different one for himself. It was a week ago, and he celebrated by skipping his afternoon physical training.

“Your serum testosterone levels are starting to rise,” adds Professor Hojo.

Sephiroth can’t stop himself from glancing up for a brief second. He knows what testosterone does. There is a plethora of medical textbooks loitering the labs, and Sephiroth has read them to ease the boredom of his life, and even if he hadn’t, the technicians, janitors, etc. certainly joke about testosterone often enough. 

“Have you started to feel sexual urges as of yet?” asks Professor Hojo.

“No,” Sephiroth says, quickly.

The nurse lets out a snort.

“I don’t have time to cajole you,” says Professor Hojo. “I’ve received the reports about the state of your bedsheets.”

“I can’t help what happens when I sleep,” says Sephiroth. Or when he has nothing to do.

“What paraphernalia do you use?” asks Professor Hojo.

“What?” 

Professor Hojo makes a frustrated noise, his face twisting like old, soggy paper. “Now’s not the time for shame. What do you use to get yourself off?” 

“I’m not ashamed,” says Sephiroth, without even looking at the nurse. As far as invasive things that have been done to him, this one doesn’t make the top ten. It doesn’t make the top twenty. “Who or what am I supposed to feel sexual urges for here?” He gestures at the nurse. “Her?” 

The conversation ends there, which Sephiroth considers a tentative victory. He thinks about the question afterwards as he lies on his bed. What gets him off? His own hand, he supposes. From his furtive eavesdropping - a pointless, harmless habit he’s developed over the years - he gets that he’s expected to _get off to_ beautiful people. Beautiful women, to be specific. There aren’t many in the lab, and the ones that do visit ignore him. Or help with the experiments that leave him writhing in pain for hours. 

_Those are happening less and less often,_ he tells himself, suddenly on the verge of quiet panic.

He lays on his bed, mindlessly wrapping the tail-end of his hair around his hand, breathing in and out deeply. It’s not enough to truly calm him. Professor Hojo’s interest in his testosterone levels is a bad sign. It’s a _horrible_ sign that makes Sephiroth regard his own anatomy with despairing terror. Every other part of his physiology is meticulously, ruthlessly monitored and tracked. Why would this one be any different? He needs to brace himself.

It starts innocuously enough. A couple of days later, Sephiroth finds a set of magazines in his bedroom with a note from Professor Hojo. _Rank these according to gratification levels._

It’s pornography. The paraphernalia Professor Hojo asked about. Naked women and men in what Sephiroth assumes are meant to be provocative poses, with emphasis on the genitals. He feels nothing as he flips through the pages. Maybe a vague uncomfortable sense around his middle, but that has more to do with imagining Professor Hojo eagerly waiting for his response so he can craft the next phase of his experiment. 

The last magazine is outright baffling: a bestiary. Sephiroth flips through, trying to keep the confusion off his face (there are cameras in his room; he _knows_ he hasn’t found them all). The monsters are not having sex, as far as Sephiroth can tell, but they are drawn in artistic poses that exaggerate and anthrophormize their bodies. That’s not what a capparwire looks like; Sephiroth would know. 

Humans are not supposed to be aroused by animals. Is this last magazine a joke? 

No. A control group. 

Sephiroth looks at the three questionnaires on the table and indulges in some petty rebellion. He rates the pronography zero on the gratification scale, and the bestiary a ten. 

Let Professor Hojo figure out how to get animals to cooperate in sex experiments. 

The sordid matter won’t leave his thoughts, though Professor Hojo seems to forget about him once more. The magazines stay in Sephiroth’s room, but the gratification questionnaires disappear. Idly, Sephiroth flips through the magazines at night, wondering if he should. . . use them. He might have wanted to, if only he didn’t see Professor Hojo’s curious, twisted face whenever he lays eyes on them. It’s easier to look at the damn bestiary, which has some fanciful descriptions for all the monsters. 

“You bedsheets are cleaner than ever, boy,” Professor Hojo says, during his next visit.

Sephiroth shrugs. He’s been _getting himself off_ in the shower whenever he feels the need. Which isn’t that often to begin with.

“Must you make everything difficult?” Professor Hojo says, mournfully. 

There’s no need to bother with a response to that.

“Sephiroth,” says Professor Hojo, pulling out Sephiroth’s chair and actually sitting in front of him, “we’re at a crucial part of our experiment.”

“It’s not our experiment,” Sephiroth interrupts, abruptly furious. His hands twitch, bile rising up in his throat. “I never agreed to any of this, and I don’t care about your results.”

Professor Hojo regards him with wide eyes, as though Sephiroth had struck him. Then he leans forward and strokes his chin, lips twisting into something that might have passed for a smile on anyone else's face. "I expected this," he says. "Testosterone's side effects include irritability and increased aggression."

Side effects? Can a person have side effects from a substance their body is creating naturally? 

"You must learn to manage this, boy," says Professor Hojo. "Do not let your baser instincts keep you from greatness."

There is literally nothing to say. Nothing that doesn't make Sephiroth's skin crawl. He doesn’t realize he’d been holding his breath until Hojo leaves his room and a relieved wheeze escapes him. 

That night, Sephiroth stays under the showerhead for longer than necessary, where it’s acceptable for his cheeks to be wet. Maybe it won’t be so bad. It’s supposed to feel good, isn’t it? 

Professor Hojo disappears again. It doesn’t help Sephiroth’s mood; his eyes keep fliting around everywhere, waiting for whoever will stick a needle in his neck and sedate him so that the scientists can take what they need. Perhaps that’s why he notices the little girl again, staring at him with wide green eyes. She had not stopped, but Sephiroth had long since stopped considering her a potential threat. He could snap her in half before she realizes what’s happened. 

But Sephiroth is bored, and it seems that no one is watching the girl when she comes to the cafeteria. He thinks about it for a couple more days, then makes up his mind. The little girl’s green eyes manage to get even bigger when Sephiroth approaches her, and her tiny shoulders tense. But she holds his gaze as he sits down, and her dainty little nostrils flare.

“You’re staring at me,” says Sephiroth. 

She stares at him more.

“It’s rude,” says Sephiroth. The techs had made sure he understood that.

“The Planet says you’re evil,” says the little girl.

Sephiroth blinks, taken aback more by her reedy voice than the nonsensical words themselves. He doesn’t remember ever hearing a child’s voice before, outside of the television. Has he always been the youngest person in the room?

“You’ll help the Calamity,” she says.

“Do you even know what a ‘calamity’ is?” 

“It’s a bad thing,” she says, lip trembling.

Not specific enough. “A horrible event that causes great suffering,” says Sephiroth. 

Then he waits. She doesn’t seem to catch her error.

“You can’t ‘help’ a _calamity_ ,” explains Sephiroth. “It’s just a thing that happens, not a person or organization.” 

“It’s what the Planet says,” she insists.

“That’s crazy,” says Sephiroth. “You sound crazy. That’s not good.” The scientists don’t like it because it happens when the brain cannot handle the mako. Are they exposing her to too much mako?

“The Planet isn’t crazy,” says the girl, offended.

Well, if she is suffering through the effects of mako, she cannot be reasoned with. “What’s your name?” asks Sephiroth.

“Aerith.”

“I’m Sephiroth,” he says, because that’s what’s supposed to happen when people first meet, going by books and TV, anyway. Sephiroth doesn’t get to meet people very often, and when he does, it’s usually scientists and doctors who don’t bother to introduce themselves.

They eat together in silence, though she grips her fork so hard that knuckles pale, as though she thinks she’s strong enough to use the metal as a weapon. It’s probably not the normal way to go about these things, but Sephiroth doesn’t want to flee the table. She can stare at him all she likes; it’s not like she can hurt him. She even gives him her apple after she finishes her meal, which Sephiroth accepts as a sign of good will. He doesn’t intend to eat it, as he always picks food from the salad bar and self-serving area at random so no one has a chance to slip him something. 

Aerith continues to sit with him during lunch, silent and tense, though her staring subsides. Like one of the weak monsters that Professor Hojo used to make him fight during his experiments. They’d all stared at Sephiroth and growled, at first, trying to scare him even when they sensed that Sephiroth was stronger. He had figured out fairly quickly that if he ignored them, the monsters would grow more comfortable around him and ignore him in turn (and then Hojo had started injecting the beasts with mako to infuriate them). 

Sephiroth doesn’t know if his goal is to get Aerith to ignore him, per se, but he would like her to be less afraid of him. 

A few days into their lunches, Aerith brings a chess board with her and dumps the pieces on the table. A few pawns tumble to the floor, and Aerith gasps and crawls down to get them while Sephiroth wonders who gave her such a thing. He has only ever seen chess boards on TV. A few times, he had asked for a board and been ignored. They use elaborate geometric puzzles and military maps to test his intelligence, they’d said, as though that explained why Sephiroth couldn’t play a game. 

Aerith, it turns out, hasn’t heard of chess at all. Sephiroth has to explain the rules to her, as best he can considering he has never played the game himself. 

“We can make our own rules,” Aerith tells him, breathless with excitement. 

Why not? If nothing else, it makes for an interesting strategic challenge to outsmart a general who gets to make up her own rules. Or Sephiroth imagines that it might, if said general wasn’t such a young child. 

Weeks and weeks go by, and Sephiroth almost forgets all about Professor Hojo. He trains with Lieutenant Armstrong, lets Hojo’s nurse draw her samples as she wishes, reads the bestiary at night, and plays chess with Aerith at lunch. Their version of chess. Her favorite pieces are the bishops, no matter how much Sephiroth protests that the objective of the game is to capture the king. She arranges the pawns around them, then mimes jumping them over with the knights (horsies). 

The more comfortable she gets around him, the more she talks during her games. She makes up stories about defeating her Calamity. Sephiroth has gotten into the habit of capitalizing the word in his head, like Aerith has gotten him to think of it as a. . . not as a person. As an identity. 

Though Sephiroth has access to calendars, it’s still a surprise when the TV and radios around the lab start playing Yule songs incessantly, and gushing about what the best gifts of the season would be. Sephiroth likes Yule, since the doctors all disappear for a bit for their rituals. Aerith, on the other hand, seems dejected about spending the holiday locked up in an underground lab.

“There won’t be snow down here,” she complains.

“Snow’s not so great,” says Sephiroth. He hates winter storm setting for the combat simulator, how easy it is to slip on the ice like some kind of idiot. At least it hasn’t happened in a long while. 

The more the TV and radio go on about a white Yule and Father Jolfaur bringing presents from the Northern Crater, the more dejected Aerith seems to get. Her sadness comes and goes in waves, interrupted by odd moments of joy, like the time the cafeteria serves gingerbread cookies. They taste awful, as they have for as long as Sephiroth can remember, but Aerith insists they’re the best thing she’s had since arriving at the lab. 

One day, as the custodians hang up Yule decorations all over the cafeteria, Aerith abruptly turns her eyes on him. “The Planet’s wrong,” she declares, her tiny hand curled into a fist around a bishop. “You’re not with the Calamity. You’re _nice_.” 

“Okay,” Sephiroth says, forcing his tone to stay neutral. He pauses for a handful of seconds, mindful of the custodians and their jingling bells. “Let’s go on with the game.”

There are eyes and ears everywhere. Professor Hojo isn’t gone, even when he’s invisible. It hits Sephiroth, for the first time, that it might be awful beyond words if Hojo knows that he and Aerith are. . . whatever they’ve become to each other. 

The moment passes without incident, but it triggers a change nonetheless. Professor Hojo is always watching. Sephiroth had almost forgotten. 

A few days later, Aerith brings something new to the table: a little book with basic chess rules, and an introduction to basic gaming strategy. Sephiroth eyes it with absolute suspicion. That should not be new. Who had given her the book?

“Who gave you the book?”

“It’s a Yule present,” says Aerith. “For you.”

Sephiroth flips through the pages, absorbing the diagrams. Despite his misgivings, his interest is piqued. “From who?” 

“From me, silly!”

“And who gave it to you?” insists Sephiroth. 

“It doesn’t matter,” says Aerith, avoiding his gaze.

That means it _does_ matter. Still, Sephiroth appreciates the importance of discretion. He slips the small book into his pocket. “I don’t have anything for you,” he says. The bestiary is his only source of entertainment, and while he could do without it (especially now that he has a new book), the thought of giving such a thing to Aerith makes him feel ill.

“You’re the gift, silly.”

Sephiroth smiles. Or tries to. It sounds like something someone on TV might say, and then there would be music and hugs. But Sephiroth does not like being touched. 

“Maybe I do have something,” he says, and starts folding the chessboard and putting the pieces away. “Come on.”

As expected, the area with the combat simulator is deserted. Yule Day is around the corner, so most of the lab staff have gone home to be with their families. 

“Are we allowed to be here?” Aerith asks, looking at the weapons rack while Sephiroth programs the combat simulator.

“I am,” Sephiroth says, confident, though he certainly isn’t supposed to be here unsupervised. With a little girl. 

He sets the simulator for Mt. Nibel, early fall with light snow, with wolves on level one. Just in case, not that he intends to finish the simulation with Aerith in tow. He just wants her to see the snow, if it means so much to her. 

“You have to do exactly as I say when we go inside, okay?” Sephiroth tells Aerith, as he selects a bangle equipped with Cure and Fire. 

“Okay,” nods Aerith, fisting a hand on his shirt.

Aerith’s teeth start chattering the instant the door to the combat simulator closes, though Sephiroth barely feels a chill as flakes of simulated snow hit his face. A fresh coat of snow, pristine as any commercial, blankets the trees.

“Pretty,” says Aerith, beginning to take a step away from Sephiroth.

The computerized voice of the simulator announces that the first round is about to begin, and Aerith gasps when the first Nibel wolf appears. She slides behind him, gripping his shirt with both hands.

“It’s nothing,” Sephiroth tries to reassure her, as the wolf growls. Even if the simulated wolves manage to get past him, which they won’t, any damage they do will be imaginary. Any potential pain will vanish the moment the simulation ends. 

The Nibel wolf leaps into the air with a loud growl. Aerith’s scream is louder. 

Sephiroth fires off a high level Lightning spell that knocks the wolf off the air, searing its coat. It falls in front of them, writhing in pain as the scent of burnt flesh and fur permeates the air. Aerith grips Sephiroth’s shirt and pulls down as she cries.

“There won’t be more wolves until this one dies,” says Sephiroth, as the wolf struggles to get back up, alternating between threatening growls and pained whimpers. The computer seems confused by having to simulate a single wolf left to die slowly in what’s supposed to be a combat routine. 

“I want to go back!” yells Aerith. 

“But the snow - ”

“ - this is awful!” screams Aerith.

“Okay,” says Sephiroth. He gives the command to end the simulation.

The wounded wolf disappears first. Then the mountains in the background, taking the snow with them. The ambient temperature starts to rise to the lab’s usual cool levels, until they are standing in the steel grey dome of the combat simulator, Aerith crying quietly behind Sephiroth.

“It’s okay,” says Sephiroth, trying to pull her off him. “It wasn’t real. Come on. If you cry so much. . .” They’ll think she needs painkillers, and that’ll just make her feel worse later. 

But they aren’t here. That’s why Sephiroth came in the first place.

So he waits for Aerith to calm down, sad and patient. He should have prepared more for this, maybe programmed in some non-combat scenarios into the simulator. Checked if it’s possible, if nothing else.

“I’m sorry,” says Aerith, after she manages to stop crying. 

“It’s okay,” Sephiroth says. “Happy Yulesday.”

Aerith giggles, wiping at her cheeks and looking up at him, trying to smile. “Thank you.”

Sephiroth nods, then gestures at the door. They need to leave before someone comes looking for either of them.

**Author's Note:**

> Uh, so Hojo wants to breed Sephiroth and is monitoring his hormone levels via blood tests. Which freaks Sephiroth the fuck out. Nothing sexually explicit happens, and there is no romance at all, and Hojo is not sexually interested in Sephiroth or Aerith. There is no eroticism to this story. 
> 
> But still. It's technically a little kid in a sexual situation against his will, so if you're sensitive to those types of stories, please skip this one.
> 
> My [twitter account.](https://twitter.com/LaTigra46636273)


End file.
